Whenever I travel, I am reminded of how awful TV is. Like a bag of circus peanuts, TV would be great if you had the willpower to just sample it. But no, I eat the circus peanuts until I want to jump off a bridge, and I flip through TV stations in a hotel room until my IQ breaks below 70.

During my recent trip to Memphis for ALEC’s Spring Task Force, all of the “political” shows were in a tizzy over Joe Biden’s alleged gaffe on swine flu, and Miss California’s alleged bigotry.

On Biden: Does it matter that the question was, “What would you tell your family?” If the question had been, “Are you recommending that all Americans stay in unless absolutely necessary?” then OK you could get mad if what he said contradicted the views of objective medical experts. But that wasn’t what the question was. Yeah yeah, I know that our country interpreted the answer in the same way, but that’s a reflection on what a bunch of fools live in this country. Do you really care what Joe Biden tells his family about anything? “Hey Mr. Vice President, my daughter is writing a paper for her law school class. What tips would you give your kids in comparable circumstances?”

I think it is always best to assume that government officials tell you the EXACT OPPOSITE of the truth. So, the Obama Administration is telling us: (a) this is a potentially serious worldwide emergency, and (b) it is too late to close the border with Mexico because there are already some U.S. cases.

That leads me to suspect: (a) This is not a potentially serious worldwide emergency, and (b) if it were, it would make a lot of sense (from a medical perspective) to close the border with Mexico.

The other big thing was the flap over Miss California. (Of course I think the main reason for the story was that all the shows–including those sympathetic to the exploitation of women like Keith Olbermann–showed clips of her in a bikini before going to commercial break.) I promise you I do not follow this stuff; I actually thought “Perez Hilton” was Paris Hilton, and that the bloggers were intentionally misspelling the name to be hip like “teh.”

But this particular quote (if accurate) coming from Keith Lewis, who runs the Miss California pageant, was absurd:

I am personally saddened and hurt that Miss California believes marriage rights belong only to a man and a woman….Religious beliefs have no place in politics in the Miss California family.

So if a contestant said the biggest social problem in the world was the human trafficking of girls in Africa, and then later on it turned out she thought everyone was a child of God and hence deserved freedom, would Lewis have been upset?

Actually he probably would be, now that I think of it. Basically, the little box in which religious beliefs are now permissible has shrunk even more. We already know you can’t bring God into science, but now you can’t bring him into your views of politics either. It’s fine if you nutjobs want to go to church every Sunday, but that’s where the madness stays.